Some Hardware Upgrade Suggestions Please

[Grantp]

Hi All,
This is my current hardware setup

Motherboard - SuperMicro X9SCM-F
CPU - Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2
RAM - 32GB Kingston ECC
H.Drives - 16x4TB HGST Deskstar NAS
Raid Card - 2xM1015
Network Cards - 2xChelsio S310E-CR
FreeNAS-11.0-U3

I have some spare cash at the moment (£400-£500 / $540-$675) and I was wondering about upgrading my FreeNAS box. My current mother board is limited to the 32GB of ECC memory I already have, and as I now have 64TB of spinning rust I thought about a new motherboard. Can someone suggest a MB preferably SuperMicro that takes more than 32Gb of DDR3 ECC Memory that way I can keep my current memory as looking around 64GB DDR4 ECC memory kits are around £600.

Has anyone got any other suggestions for an upgrade I am open to suggestions

Many thanks
Grant

 

[Chris Moore]

To be able to use more memory, and still use the same kind of memory, you would need to step up to a socket 2011 board like the Supermicro X9srl-f. That is actually the upgrade path I was looking at, for the very same reason.
That would support 64GB of the kind of memory you have now, or you could go up to 256GB of RDIMM (registered) memory.

I don't think any of the Xeon E3 processors that use DDR3 will go over 32GB. The DDR4 systems is a whole different story.

I hope this helps.

 

[Grantp]

Hi Chris thanks for reply.

Looks like I will be staying where I am for the moment. My budget won't stretch as far as needed to do an upgrade.

SuperMicro X9SRL-F = £330.00
Intel Xeon E5-V2670 V2 = £180.00
Kingston KVR16E11K4 DDR3 ECC = £308.00

£800 is currently out of my range

 

[Chris Moore]

£800 is currently out of my range

Me also, but perhaps you can save this surplus and add it to the next surpluses to have enough.

 

[Chris Moore]

Hi Chris thanks for reply.

Looks like I will be staying where I am for the moment. My budget won't stretch as far as needed to do an upgrade.

SuperMicro X9SRL-F = £330.00
Intel Xeon E5-V2670 V2 = £180.00
Kingston KVR16E11K4 DDR3 ECC = £308.00

£800 is currently out of my range

Or, you could get the system board and processor now and keep using your existing memory with it.
Then you can get more memory later, when you have more cash.

 

[Grantp]

True, Will I see much of a performance boost with the MB and CPU upgrade, I was assuming the very slugish performance was due to lack of memory. It is mainly used as a Plex Server and also run SickRage, loading these apps takes ages and Plex is almost unusable at times. So much so that I watch most of my media through VLC then just mark as watched in Plex so I can keep track of were I am up to.

 

[Chris Moore]

I have less storage but that shouldn't make that big a difference. There must be something wrong or your Plex would be working great. I use mine all the time. The only other thing I can see is if the SickRage is using too many resources. What does your utilization look like?

 

[Grantp]

Sorry for such a NOOB question but what is the best way to see / show you system utilization. I have added a screenshot of the output from the 'top' command.

 

[Stux]

How have you structured your pool?

Output of zpool status?

 

[Grantp]

Here's my zpool status output

 

[MrToddsFriends]

I'm not sure if Swap: 30G Total, 30G Free in the top output means that really no swap is used, not even a relatively small amount (let's say a few hundred MB or so).

Have a look at the Memory -> Swap Utilization Reporting graph for the last days/weeks.

While marginal swap usage may have sluggish performance as a consequence, this wouldn't mean that doubling your RAM would solve the situation.

 

[Inxsible]

With the CPU, board, NIC and RAM combination you should not be having any problems running Plex.
Hell, I run 2 Plex streams with a Pentium G3240 and 16GB of RAM. How many streams are you running simultaneously? I have no idea about SickRage's requirements - as I have never used it.